Roughnecks finish regular season with loss, now look to playoffs

The collective minds of the Calgary Roughnecks have been on one opponent for a while now.

Today, the preparations for the Colorado Mammoth begin in earnest.

“As a player, you live for the playoffs,” said Calgary head coach Curt Malawsky. “As coaches, you live for the playoffs. They have a great group in Colorado. We gave the top team in the NLL a real big push. Now it’s for real, it’s for keeps, what the guys have been waiting for.”

The ‘Necks closed off the 2018 National Lacrosse League regular season with a narrow 11-10 loss to the Saskatchewan Rush in the Battle of the Prairies at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon. The Riggers finish with an 8-10 record, identical to last year’s standing. This time around, though, they’ve qualified for the post-season.

Calgary plays Colorado on Saturday at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

“When you look at our record, we were 1-5 early and that speaks a lot to the kind of lacrosse we’ve been playing down the stretch,” suggested sniper Holden Cattoni, who led the team with four goals and finishes with 36.

“The last three games we’ve been game-planning, getting ready for that and now it’s time to do it. We have to put together everything we’ve learned about ourselves and put it to use so that we can give ourselves the best opportunity to win next Saturday.”

“It’s a testament to the boys, sticking with things,” added Malawsky. “We just wanted to get better, get better. Coming down the stretch, I think we got better every week. This is a focused group. We earned our spot in the playoffs and now we have to go down there and earn the right to carry on.”

Saturday night’s game was yet another opportunity for the team to work out some kinks. They had chances to tweak their play with the man advantage as they enjoyed eight powerplay opportunity, but only scored on two of them. The Roughnecks also added a shorthanded tally, Garrett McIntosh netting a nifty transition goal.

This game was exactly what might have been predicted: two teams that have bigger fish to fry and thus aren’t going to be giving away any game plans and hoping not to suffer any injuries. And yet, it was a highly-contested match, the passions emerging as the Roughnecks made it a one-goal game late in the fourth.

Calgary fell behind 2-0 after the first 15 minutes, as both starting goaltenders — Calgary’s Christian Del Bianco and Saskatchewan’s Evan Kirk — took turns being brilliant. The clubs traded goals in the second frame, Calgary getting its first lead of the evening when Curtis Dickson notched his 45th of the year. Ryan Keenan scored with .8 seconds left in the half to make it a 5-5 game heading into the intermission.

In the third quarter, the Rush, who finish atop the league at 14-4, were relentless. Twice they scored goals just seconds apart and the Roughnecks could not keep up, thus they fell behind 9-6 after 45 minutes.

Saskatchewan went up by three again nine minutes into the final period, 11-8, and appeared to be sailing along nicely, but the Roughnecks were not about to lay down. Cattoni’s fourth and Dane Dobbie’s first on the night put the outcome into question and the Rush managed to hang on, thanks in large part to a Calgary penalty late in the game.

“It speaks well for our character,” noted Cattoni. “We know what we have in the room and we know we’re capable of coming back. We need to work harder earlier in the game.”

“We talked about the resolve,” said Malawsky. “We battled back and that’s something that in the past it ends up 14-9. For us to battle back and have an opportunity to come within one … we showed good resolve and good character. It’s a testament to the guys.”

Saskatchewan’s supremely talented Mark Matthews had six assists in the contest, setting an NLL single-season record with 84.

Del Bianco had another strong game in net as he faced 43 shots from the best offence in the NLL.

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